The Supreme Court will on Thursday decide the legal validity of the Central government’s ‘Electoral Bond’ scheme which allows anonymous funding to the political parties. A five-judge Constitution bench will deliver its verdict on a batch of pleas that challenges the constitutionality of the ‘Electoral Bond’ scheme. Under this scheme, the name and other information of the donor are not entered on the bonds, raising suspicions of corruption.
The petitions were filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms, Common Cause and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The Supreme Court had wrapped up the hearing in November last year.
On the top court’s direction, the Election Commission then compiled the details of all the ‘Electoral Bonds’ shared by various political parties and submitted them to the Supreme Court in a sealed cover.
What is Electoral Bond scheme?
The electoral bonds scheme, which was notified by the government on January 2, 2018, was pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties as part of efforts to bring transparency in political funding.
Electoral bonds are monetary instruments that citizens or corporate groups can buy from a bank and give to a political party, which is then free to redeem the same for money.
According to the annual audited report submitted to the Election Commission by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the saffron party received nearly ₹1,300 crore through electoral bonds in 2022-23. The party’s total contributions stood at ₹2,120 crore in the 2022-23 fiscal, of which 61 per cent came from electoral bonds.
The funding from electoral bonds to the Congress was ₹171 crore in 2022-23, down from ₹236 crore in 2021-22.
According to the Ministry of Finance, “The purchaser would be allowed to buy electoral bond(s) only on due fulfilment of all the extant KYC norms and by making payment from a bank account. It will not carry the name of payee. Electoral Bonds would have a life of only 15 days during which it can be used for making donation only to the political parties registered under section 29A of the Representation of the Peoples Act, 1951 (43 of 1951) and which secured not less than one per cent of the votes polled in the last general election to the House of the People or a Legislative Assembly.”
(With agency inputs)
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Published: 14 Feb 2024, 09:14 PM IST
